[yt-dev] Issue tracking with JIRA?

[Nathan Goldbaum]

Hi Matt,

> But, this would require a lot of buy-in on the part of the big
> contributors -- as well as on the part of smaller contributors.  I see
> it as being a possible venue for either tracking everything (which
> might cause problems since we're finally getting bugs reported) or
> just tracking enhancements to the code base and longer term things.
> For instance, we could still include bugs in the Issue Tracker but
> then move things like "fast neighbor query for particles" to JIRA.

Hmm, so I guess this will be a bit more of a pain that I had hoped - JIRA does not currently link with the issue tracker on bitbucket.  Instead, we would have to move the issues over to JIRA 'by hand'.  There are importers for other issue tracking systems, but right now not for the bitbucket issue tracker.  Worse yet, there's no way to export bitbucket issues to the CSV format that JIRA can read.  I guess that's a further limitation of the bitbucket issue tracker, but it makes our lives more difficult if we want to switch over.

In light of this limitation I agree with Matt that we should keep the bug reports and tracking on the bitbucket side until Atlassian improves integration between bitbucket and JIRA.

On the other hand, JIRA would be perfect for planning, tracking, and presenting progress on long and medium-term development goals, something that we're currently using bitbucket for, although I would argue that there isn't much buy-in and bitbucket not terribly useful for this purpose.

Personally, I'm +1 on using JIRA to manage our project roadmap.  I'd curious how other developers feel about this, particularly if you think it will just be another thing that will get in the way of making progress.

Cheers,

Nathan


On Oct 10, 2012, at 7:54 AM, Matthew Turk wrote:

> Hi Nathan,
> 
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:02 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> The recent bitbucket update called my attention to JIRA, another Atlassian
>> product.  If you've never heard of it, this video gives a good summary of
>> what it does:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTvEudE4WWA
>> 
>> JIRA is integrated with bitbucket so it should be straightforward to connect
>> it with our repositories and issue tracking system. Seeing as how we're
>> going to transition to yt-3.0, which hopefully means that a lot will be
>> getting done, this will hopefully help keep us organized and track progress.
>> 
>> We should qualify for a free open source license:
>> http://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-license-request
>> 
>> Thoughts?
> 
> The issue tracker on BitBucket has a number of downsides to it.  I
> would be interested in exploring alternatives.  In particular, the
> issue tracker as it stands does a much better job of tracking bugs
> than it does handle tracking enhancements.  I think our community is
> growing very rapidly, and I think it would be very valuable to have a
> public roadmap that is more codified than just a bunch of emails.
> Plus, JIRA allows for ties into things like the commits in a much more
> flexible way than the issue tracker does -- including Bamboo, which is
> Atlassian's testing system.  In fact, Bamboo would work quite nicely
> with unit testing, and would offload much of the work of testing new
> branches and PRs.
> 
> But, this would require a lot of buy-in on the part of the big
> contributors -- as well as on the part of smaller contributors.  I see
> it as being a possible venue for either tracking everything (which
> might cause problems since we're finally getting bugs reported) or
> just tracking enhancements to the code base and longer term things.
> For instance, we could still include bugs in the Issue Tracker but
> then move things like "fast neighbor query for particles" to JIRA.
> 
> One problem that I think we should be wary of is that participation
> from individual contributors can vary considerably, and adding new
> systems on top of the existing ones can reduce eagerness.  While I
> would love to have a proper project roadmap the developers participate
> in, I am not sure this is feasible or desirable for others -- but it
> is worth exploring.  I'd encourage everybody to watch the video, think
> about how we could potentially catalyze development and encourage
> participation, longer-range planning, and coordinated efforts.  I'd
> like to hear from others about what they think of the JIRA idea.  (As
> well as any other projects like Bamboo, actually.)
> 
> -Matt
> 
>> 
>> -Nathan
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